Reflections on the state of the world which proceed with the scriptures in one hand and the newspaper in the other

Friday, March 18, 2005

The Fourth Turning Gets Personal - Part II

But it is the second aspect of this case which disturbs me even more deeply than the mere prospect of fundamentalists with power. That is the increasing sense I have that when fundamentalists of any ideological stripe gain power, their tendency to exercise any kind of restraint in its use is limited if not non-existent. Hence the question my small, still voice was posing in the early light of dawn: When does prosecution become persecution?

In the instant case, a Baptist Republican prosecutor (King) is hired by a Republican governor (Bush) to investigate a Democratic mayor (Dyer) resulting in an indictment immediately upon which the Republican governor suspends the Democratic mayor thought to be a rising star in state politics. But there's more. The current US Senator from Florida, a Cuban-American Republican named Mel Martinez, had employed the same campaign worker to collect African-American absentee ballots in 2000. And the current Florida Secretary of State, Republican Glenda Hood, chosen by the Republican governor after serving two years as mayor of Orlando, had employed the same campaign worker to collect African-American absentee ballots in her mayoral race in 2000. Now, bombshell time - they cannot be indicted because the grand jury waited just long enough to return indictments to place those elections outside the statute of limitations for prosecution.

Of course, the blatant abuse of power to persecute those in the opposing party is nothing new. Democratic Vice President Andrew Johnson who ran with Lincoln in 1864 only to become President upon Lincoln's assassination was treated horrendously by the Radical Republican Congress hell-bent on punishing the South after the Civil War. His impeachment charges were trumped up and he ultimately prevailed by but one vote in the Senate, dying a broken man (as did the Kansas senator who was courageous enough to vote against the conviction who died in poverty and reprobation). Bill Clinton's impeachment for lying about a blow job by a White House aid in an investigation of a real estate swindle is a modern example of the abuse of power for partisan purposes. Clearly prosecution can be persecution.

Moreover, unrestrained use of power to persecute others is not relegated to government. The current struggles within the Anglican Communion to drive out any who do not hold to very narrow understandings of sexuality and very literal appropriations of scripturesimply mirror their counterparts in politics. It seems to me the cycle works like this:

1. Conservatives come to power riding a wave of generalized public anxiety and fearoften itself the result of demagoguery and fear mongering by conservatives

2. Conservatives seek to consolidate their power through exercise of hegemony,controlling the press and thus public discourse, as well as through control ofbureaucratic policy implementers

3. Conservatives then seek to completely dominate society generally through the use of legal mechanisms, rendering any opposition inert and powerless through the now dominated justice system

4. Conservatives ultimately seek to eliminate all those who do not share their vision.

In years past, this cycle has played out in a number of ways, the most destructive of which is the rather classic Fascist authoritarianism of the Third Reich. Some of us wonder if this is not the trajectory on which the current US power holders are embarked, fascism being the natural successor to capitalist states which inevitably become less and less stable as the wealth, status and power of the nation-state becomes more disparately polarized. I shudder to consider the possibilities.

In Strauss and Howe's study The Fourth Turning, the mark of the end of third cycles is the fragmentation of the public into highly polarized groups locked in the death grip of continual conflict. Preceding third cycles included the post-Jackson antebellum period and the Roaring Twenties. Those cycles preceded two of the deadliest and most destructive eras of American history: the Civil War and the Great Depression/WWII era. I sense the disintegration of American national cohesion and the increasingly bold willingness of the right to use its fear-driven rise to power without restraint is the beginning of a Fourth Turning. I admit to being fearful about this coming time of crisis. But what makes me most fearful is the level of denial I see in most of my fellow citizens.

A poster to a list in which I participate recently forwarded a portion of an address by President Buchanan, the Southern born president who immediately preceded Lincoln and the Civil War. While the guns of Charleston were being positioned for the initial assault on Ft. Sumter, the president was railing against northern agitators seeking to abolish slavery saying that it was these radical dissidents who were the problem for the United States. Substitute those who are not patriotic for northern agitators and this statement could easily have been made by the current occupant of the White House. George Bush exhibits a similar superficiality in his rhetoric which often features very simplistic black and white conceptualizations. But what is particularly disturbing is that George Bush and the many superficial thinkers currently holding power in our land also show no concern for restraint on the exercise of power.

It is this paradigm of superficial reason combined with unrestrained power that begins at the top and manifests itself all the way down to the local level unchecked by any popular outcry. So while my friend's indictment is the closest this tyrannical abuse of power has come to touching my own life, I fear it will hardly be the last. And it is not just for myself that I fear. A country divided against itself cannot stand for long. A country whose powerful cannibalize its powerless is not long for the nation-states of the world. As Jefferson once remarked, " I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thursday, March 17, 2005

The Fourth Turning Gets Personal - Part One

The little voice in my head woke me with a question: When does prosecution become persecution? That question has been rumbling around a lot in my head since the events of last Friday. It seems the grand jury called to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the Orlando mayoral election returned four indictments which included the current mayor whom I supported as well as a judge, a campaign worker whose activities form the crux of the state's case, and his campaign manager, a long-time dear friend.

The lawyer in me was not happy until I read the indictments and looked up the statute in question. It is vague at best, prohibiting any one person from collecting absentee ballots in an election, inspired by a scandal in Miami in which many actual ballots ended up in garbage dumps and a number of ballots bearing names of deceased people appeared at the polls to be counted. The primary focus of the legislation, as far as I can tell from a Florida Supreme Court case citing the statute in question, is ensuring voters' ballots are counted. The Court cited a long list of acts the statute sought to prohibit which includes "vote brokering." So far as I can tell, the actions of the local campaign worker in Orlando do not fall into any of those categories.

I'd like to say I would be surprised if these indictments (remembering that the requirements of returning an indictment in Florida are so low that grand juries could readily indict kitchen cabinets) resulted in a conviction. But given the circumstances of this case, I have to wonder. Essentially, the loser in the mayoral election, a Republican who lost to a Democrat without even a run-off, contacted the Republican governor about what he decided were fraudulent activities. Clearly the reasoning was that without such activities, a run-off would have been required. The local state attorney, a Democrat, refused to get involved because he knew some of the parties involved and feared having his impartiality questioned. So, the Republican governor appointed a Republican Baptist prosecutor from two counties north to handle the investigation. Using a highly literalist interpretation of the statute in question which prohibits anyone from being paid to handle absentee ballots, prosecutor King (who undoubtedly has his sights set on higher office after years of running the state's attorney office in Ocala) puts together a paid campaign worker whoworks in the working poor African-American community to ensure that absentee ballots are cast and counted and comes up with a paid collector of absentees for purposes of fraudulently affecting the election's results and thus a voter fraud indictment.

Besides the incredibly painful personal experience of seeing my dear friend on local television cameras as she surrendered herself at the county jail for booking, there are two aspects of this situation which make me very nervous. The first is that while I am able to see the statute in question in its context - which I do not believe was intended to proscribe the particular acts in question in this case - I am not certain that contextualized reading of the law marks the average courtroom in America. Indeed, one of the legacies of legal positivism has been to read only the letter of the law, presume its validity and not inquire into context. Add to that the heavy prevalence of Sensates (who focus on the immediate, often presuming that there is no larger context - which iNtuitives demand to make sense of what they see - because they can't readily see it) in judgeships and the prospects are even dimmer. What results is a legal literalism that differs from its religious counterparts only in terms of content. The truncated cognitive process is the same.

This phenomenon is hardly confined to judicial decision making. The recent shabby treatment of Dan Rather on CBS is but one more example of the shallow thinking of the American public. Rather is clearly an egocentric man whose hubris was legendary at CBS, a rather classic fatal flaw among larger than life human figures. What is disturbing, however, is that his fall from grace at CBS occurred not because of the content of his story on George Bush's disgraceful and brief tenure in the National Guard but rather because the means by which those facts were conveyed were questionable. Lost in the discussion swirling about the fake memo were the facts it purported to relay and the witnesses who all swore them to be accurate. The form became the focus, not the substance. Of course, it's much easier to simply ignore troubling facts if one can kill the messenger up front. And who better to do so than a generation of passive recipients of superficial television and computer game entertainment which avoids critical analysis like the plague?

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.

About Me

I am a fifth generation Floridian, a fourth generation educator, third generation college educator. My great grandparents were named Reed and Wright so I guess it was fate that I would end up a teacher. I am a recovering lawyer who still holds an inactive license with the Florida Bar (I stopped practice in 1990) and an ordained Episcopal priest. My spirituality is that of an inner world (nature) mystic. I am Franciscan to my very core, a professed member of 26 years in the Third Order Society of St. Francis (TSSF). Andy , my gentle souled, soft-spoken partner of 44 years became my legal husband in 2010 on the steps of the US Supreme Court. He is G-d's greatest gift to my life. I live within two hours of my nuclear family members. Historically I have been a yellow dawg Democrat though my politics are decidedly Green. I hold a Ph.D. in Religion, Law and Society from FSU, an M.Div. from Church Divinity School of the Pacific, member seminary of the GTU in Berkeley, CA, and a J.D. and a B.A. in History and Secondary Ed from the University of Florida. I complete a two year program at Richard Rohr’s Living School for Contemplation and Action in Albuquerque, NM August 2017.